Not content with boasting about its 0.15 micron process, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company was today claiming significant successes with 0.13 and 0.10 micron technology.

TSMC's 0.13 micron efforts must be doing well - the company announced it had achieved "reasonably good" yields on its 0.13 micron 4Mb SRAM test chip, knocked out on 300mm wafers. We're not sure what "reasonably good" actually means, but TSMC is obviously very thrilled by it.

More importantly, TSMC is now ready to start producing customers' chips at 0.13 micron - which uses copper interconnects - on a test basis.

Meanwhile, TSMC also said it had finished work on test modules for its 0.10 micron process, which it expects to kick off with during Q3 2002.

TSMC described this result as the basis for future 0.10 micron development work. Future efforts will centre on defining chip design rules, transistor models and interconnect parameters - essentially making sure that its customers can create chips that can be produced using TSMC's process. ®